Grocery stores filled with confused husbands

February 07, 2009

You see them in every store - husbands wandering the aisles, looking in vain for an item their wives asked them to buy. Why do wives always send their husbands to buy things that are impossible to find? I know every inch of Ken's SuperFair Foods. I could find any normal product blindfolded. But my wife always requests items that are kept in locations that make no sense. She tells me to pick up the strangest stuff - like beef bouillon, Sweet'N Low and French fried onions. I go where those items should be, and they're not there. One day at Ken's, I even had to ask the owner himself, Ken Fiedler, where to find the French fried onions. He was nice enough to help me. Wives say it'll be a snap to find what they need. But it's never a snap. They never ask us to buy things that are easy to find -like doughnuts or Doritos. One problem is we don't like to ask for help. So we just keep trudging around the store, looking like zombies from “Night of the Living Dead.” Smart husbands Some husbands are smart. They bring a cell phone with them, so they can call home and ask for help. But I don't have a cell phone. So I'm on my own. Once, when we were visiting her sister, my wife sent me to Wal-Mart to buy some flax seed oil for the babies. She told me it would be a breeze. But it wasn't. There were three types of flax seed oil. I didn't have a phone, and a call to my wife was long-distance. I didn't want to find a bunch of quarters and a pay phone. It took a lot of study, worry and grief before I finally made a decision. I'm not the type to complain. But that was one of the most stressful days of my life. Give up? Did Indiana Jones give up searching for the golden chalice? Men are too relentless to surrender. Instead, we just tour the store, grumbling and looking confused. Others have problems I'm not the only husband who has problems. My friend Greg Guenin, who shops in a different store, suspects his wife is involved in a conspiracy. “I think she calls the grocery store and tells them what I'm after, and then they go and move it. Just so they can have a good laugh.” Guenin's wife sends him for soy milk, which he searches for in the dairy case. He's not even close. “Regular milk is in Row 999, and the soy is in Row 1,” he says. I've always managed to locate my quarry. But others are not so lucky. Every day, wives send their husbands on impossible errands, and I'm not sure some men ever complete the mission. Someday they'll find a guy who's been searching 20 years for chutney. Jeff Bahr is the American News Dakota Living editor. He writes a blog three times a week at www.aberdeennews.com. His e-mail address is jbahr@aberdeennews.com. His phone number is 605-622-2320.